The Artist Is A Thief: A Book Review

Abstract

In The Artist Is A Thief, Gray tells the fictional story of Margaret Thatcher Gandarrwuy, an internationally famous Aboriginal artist from the Mission Hole Community in the Northern Territory. Her works command high prices - until a new painting of hers is unveiled at the opening of an Aboriginal art award in Darwin. Two characters gossip about the controversy: "The painting had been vandalised. One knife slash down the middle, and one horizontal, just like a cross. And above the cross was sprayed a slogan in red paint. It must have taken a good ten or fifteen minutes alone to do all that". "What was the slogan?" "The artist is a thief." "The artist is a thief?" "Well, that's what most people thought it looked like. The writing was pretty crude, and obviously done in a hurry. It's a reference to a well-known post-modernist idea, you see. It means something like there's no such thing as an original work any more. Everything's been stolen from somewhere else. Or maybe it was racist. Some people said the vertical and horizontal slashes were meant to be a swastika, or even a cross. Or it could have been someone quite different, and the words were just a blind". The ensuing artistic and political furore calls into question the reputation of the artist Margaret Thatcher Gandarrwuy. Rumours abound that she does not paint traditional work; that the stories she paints are not from her country; and that other artists do all the hard work for her.